Opera Reviews
Maria Stuarda, Irish National Opera review – two queens sing for the crown, with spectacular resultsMonday, 13 June 2022
You don’t plan a production of a Donizetti opera without having top voices in mind. For what, after all, is his simplification of Schiller’s Mary Stuart but bel canto business as usual with a bit of high drama attached? Internationally celebrated Irish singers Tara Erraught and Anna Devin (Amy Ní Fhearraigh at some performances) are the royal cousins at deadly loggerheads. They don’t disappoint; nor do the rest of the cast, orchestra and chorus. Read more... |
Tamerlano, The Grange Festival review - Handel brilliant in parts, but you have to wait for the dramaSaturday, 11 June 2022
Handel’s operas have long posed, and still pose, severe problems for the modern theatre, and especially the modern director – all those endless streams of wonderful but emotionally more or less generalised arias hitched to interchangeable characters in fabricated love stories about crusaders or Roman emperors or oriental potentates. Read more... |
The Excursions of Mr Brouček, Grange Park Opera review - biting satire from bouncing CzechsFriday, 10 June 2022
Now for something completely different. The Excursions of Mr Brouček is Leos Janáček’s least typical opera and is rarely performed. Among his tragic tales such as Jenufa and Kat’a Kabanova, the charm of The Cunning Little Vixen and the strangely heart-twisting The Makropoulos Case, the Czech composer's biting satire – in which the time-travelling anti-hero is chiefly "blotto" – faces an uphill struggle for a look-in. Read more... |
Orfeo ed Euridice, Blackwater Valley Opera Festival review - heavenly possibilities, devils at work in the detailsTuesday, 07 June 2022
"Elysian" is the best way to describe the dream gardens of Ireland's Lismore Castle in early June: lupins, alliums and peonies rampant in endless herbaceous borders, supernatural perspectives towards the main building on various levels. This year’s Blackwater Valley Opera Festival production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, not so much: easily adjustable circumstances worked too often against talented performers in the converted stables space pressed into service once a year. Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Garsington Opera review - gambling with the highest stakesFriday, 03 June 2022
The scene is Monte-Carlo, around the beginning of the last century: a carefully observed world of cloudless skies, glittering seas, high society and careless privilege shared with Death in Venice. Read more... |
Parsifal, Opera North review - full focus and a dream line-upThursday, 02 June 2022
Wagner, in his medievalist, pan-European, 19th century way, wanted Parsifal to be a blend of abstract and religious experience for his audiences at Bayreuth, calling it a “festival play for a stage consecration”. Questions for those performing it today include how to do justice to its philosophical baggage as well as its marvellous music, and whether to introduce new elements in the visual staging that the composer never thought of. Read more... |
Siegfried, Longborough Festival review - happily concept-free but with 'Good Ideas'Tuesday, 31 May 2022
With a lapse of three years between Das Rheingold and Siegfried, and with only a semi-staged Walküre in between, it’s been hard to stay tuned to Amy Lane’s Ring production at Longborough. Read more... |
Madama Butterfly, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - an opera masterclassMonday, 30 May 2022
An opera in the Hallé concert series, conducted by Sir Mark Elder, is rather like a blend of a religious observance and a masterclass in orchestral playing and singing technique. Read more... |
Samson et Dalila, Royal Opera review - from austerity to excess, with visual rigour and aural beautyFriday, 27 May 2022
Words and situations are one-dimensional, but the music is chameleonic, if not profound, and crafted with a master’s hand. What to do about Saint-Saëns’s Biblical hokum? In Richard Jones’s new production, the end justifies the means, with persecuted Hebrews and mocking Philistines circling two essential star turns, and Antonio Pappano’s handling of a hard-to-pace score is vivid from opening keenings to final cataclysm. Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne review - fabulous singing and a classy productionTuesday, 24 May 2022
After two years of Covid-affected performances – even though there was a full season last year – Glyndebourne's annual festival is finally back in full glory. Following the big blaze of Saturday's The Wreckers, Sunday welcomed back Michael Grandage's durable production of a signature treasure, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Read more... |
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